Since it seems to be clogging up Mr. Ivankovic’s thread I’ll pose it here since it seems to be a logical reason behind his recruitment and LOI.
As a fan, are you okay with recruiting and signing lower end players to a scholarship (not as a walk-on), even if they may be your 10th, 11th, or 12th player on your team, in order to build a relationship with a program that turns out their fair share of talent, so that presumably, you would have a better “in” at securing higher level talent?
Does the offering of the scholarship change your opinion if it is late in the recruiting period (as in Ivankovic’s case)? Or would you still prefer to grab a player who may be redundant at a position not in need that be rated higher (not leaps and bounds higher, but slightly)?
This could be a local program or national, but for our sake, we will just keep this to local (NC, Southern VA, SC, Northern GA).
It is an interesting proposition. I don’t have a problem with the “strategy” of trying to get in with a program like United Faith in theory but I’m not so sure it works like that. I don’t know how signing a player 2 years removed from UFA gets us an “in road” to them unless Ivankovic is still close with his coaches there and says good things about us. It doesn’t hurt to try, and I know our staff is trying to establish relationships locally (which should be priority #1, and I think they’ve treated it as such so far) but I’m not sure if this signing will translate into a pipeline.
Ultimately, coaches, parents, players, and scouts all have an agenda. Some have good intentions, others do not. What I mean by that is that a coach at a program like UFA or Oak Hill could want to send more players to ACC/BE/SEC (we saw this sort of pimping with Eli Carter’s coach) even if it may not be the best fit for the individual player.
Every program has 12 schollies and you need your 10 through 14 or 15 guys for practice/extreme circumstances, so I don’t have a problem giving a schollie to a guy like Ivankovic as long as he understands his roll and contributes in practice/games when we need to call on him (which is hopefully not any more often that you would expect to call on the end of your bench).
I hope that this signing leads to a better relationship with UFA, even if only slightly, but I’m skeptical. Either way, I’m going to trust the staff. If they think a player fills a need (and can additionally help us with recruiting) than lets see what they bring to the table. Hopefully its a win-win for both sides.
I don’t find the “theory” that you signed him to get “in” with United Faith very practical.That guy played there 2 years ago and anyone good in their current sr class that might have played with him is signed. Several of them didn’t even get to UFA until their Jr year anyway. How is he really going to help you get current Juniors and Sophmores he didn’t play with.
Maybe you are hoping their coach appreciates picking him up and he talks you up and they steer a guy to you in the future but I don’t really buy into that either. Maybe a marginal player with small to mid level offers but that coach is still going to want to send as many guys to the ACC and highest levels as possible IMO because that helps his career.
[quote=“StillJonesing, post:3, topic:25408”]I don’t find the “theory” that you signed him to get “in” with United Faith very practical.That guy played there 2 years ago and anyone good in their current sr class that might have played with him is signed. Several of them didn’t even get to UFA until their Jr year anyway. How is he really going to help you get current Juniors and Sophmores he didn’t play with.
Maybe you are hoping their coach appreciates picking him up and he talks you up and they steer a guy to you in the future but I don’t really buy into that either. Maybe a marginal player with small to mid level offers but that coach is still going to want to send as many guys to the ACC and highest levels as possible IMO because that helps his career.[/quote]
I think the getting an “in” theory is more directed to the coaches at UFA. I agree that more times than not they are going to try to point their guys toward the BCS schools, but at the very least it helps by having the coach not just dismiss Charlotte as an option for his players. Recruiting is basically sales, and as most of us know sales are for the most part about relationships. If you make a high school/prep coach feel like he has done a great job with even his lower level players, and you develop a bond with them, then they will have no problem in saying to their kids “Hey, why don’t you go and give Charlotte a look”. No relationship means you stand a near 0% chance of ever getting any of their kids.
[quote=“StillJonesing, post:3, topic:25408”]I don’t find the “theory” that you signed him to get “in” with United Faith very practical.That guy played there 2 years ago and anyone good in their current sr class that might have played with him is signed. Several of them didn’t even get to UFA until their Jr year anyway. How is he really going to help you get current Juniors and Sophmores he didn’t play with.
Maybe you are hoping their coach appreciates picking him up and he talks you up and they steer a guy to you in the future but I don’t really buy into that either. Maybe a marginal player with small to mid level offers but that coach is still going to want to send as many guys to the ACC and highest levels as possible IMO because that helps his career.[/quote]
I don’t find you being on this board practical. Go away.
We took a big body that has ties to a top tier local program.
We needed a big man, check.
We need to get in with local programs, check.
Now we have Thorne, Braz, KJ, Ivankovic and JB (can play some 4), for our bigs. I don’t believe we’re going to ask Ivankovic to start. I’d say he’s prob 4th or 5th on that list. It’s not a risky proposition to bring him in. He’s here 2 years and hopefully he can serve his role and we can leverage some future connections with UFCA.
Probably depends on individual programs and year to year rosters. If you feel you’re fairly rock solid 1 - 10, then what the hell. Maybe it’s worth a shot.
But in our case, like I said in the other thread, I think it’s mostly a case of we feel we got the best player we could that filled a need. I think coming off of a year where we finished 13th out of 14 teams in the A10, return 2 post players(neither of which were all 3rd Team or better in the A10), we needed to get the best players we could get.
[quote=“StillJonesing, post:3, topic:25408”]I don’t find the “theory” that you signed him to get “in” with United Faith very practical.That guy played there 2 years ago and anyone good in their current sr class that might have played with him is signed. Several of them didn’t even get to UFA until their Jr year anyway. How is he really going to help you get current Juniors and Sophmores he didn’t play with.
Maybe you are hoping their coach appreciates picking him up and he talks you up and they steer a guy to you in the future but I don’t really buy into that either. Maybe a marginal player with small to mid level offers but that coach is still going to want to send as many guys to the ACC and highest levels as possible IMO because that helps his career.[/quote]
It is about building relationships.
We did not have a relationship with UFA. Now we do.
Maybe next we land a mid-level talent that fits our mold.
Then if we start winning at a high level, we have an established relationship with UFA and then they would feel more comfortable with their top players coming to Charlotte.
You have to have short-term goals and long-term goals.
It’s sales, but buisness is still buisness at the end of the day. We signed United Faith’s leading scorer and I still don’t see that as much of an “in” myself with the coaches. At least not an “in” for any of the highly recruited players there. I wish it was but it’s probably not even for any of their mid level guys that have 1 or 2 BCS offers.
Got to remember it’s those coaches job to get those players to the highest levels they can. That’s why they give the players scholorships and those players leave their high schools and homes in some cases to prep there, or even reclassify and take another year for high school.
I’m not saying it can’t help if UFA has a guy being recruited by a SoCon team or someone like that that their coach thinks could help us that he might try to send him our way. Only I expect he’d be doing the exact same with ACC schools for his top and mid level prospects because that’s his job. Guys like Morgan Wooten don’t get top level players year after year by steering them to go to most CUSA / A10 schools.
Wiseman said he expects Roberts-Campbell to do well at ECU and said the school got a "steal."
“With the senior season he’s having he probably could have played himself into the ACC or SEC, but so what?” said Wiseman.
“He’s going where he’s wanted. (ECU coaches) have been to a lot of our games this year, a lot of our practices. They’re excited about him.”
Maybe Wiseman’s different, but I’ll have to see it on a guy we land that didn’t blow up after the fact like PRC. I know we are recruiting a couple of other UFA guys so we’ll see if it helps I guess.
I think this is an “in” with foreign players as much as UFCA. Odom is known for recruiting the over seas kids (as his Dad was also) and it shows up in our recruiting recently. Charlotte being a great location for foreign players is not a bad reputation to have.
Let’s not give a schollie to a kid with local ties. Let’s go give one to a kid from California that will sit for a couple of years and help build up the local tattoo parlors’ business.
I think it’s a helluva good idea to get tight with these local basketball factories for the record.
It’s probably worth noting that our coaches who we pay to do a job, that includes recruiting, felt there was an advantage to signing this kid. Maybe they wanted the “in”, maybe they see some development opportunity and depth for our bench.
At the end of the day, unless they tell us why at some point, all of this is just speculation. Given that we already have what appears to be a very solid class coming in next year, and we’ve yet to see any of these guys on the court, I’m willing to give our coaching staff the benefit of the doubt.
[quote=“hootie, post:13, topic:25408”]Let’s not give a schollie to a kid with local ties. Let’s go give one to a kid from California that will sit for a couple of years and help build up the local tattoo parlors’ business.
I think it’s a helluva good idea to get tight with these local basketball factories for the record.[/quote]
[quote=“NLP, post:13, topic:25408”]And now it’s a Lutz thread!
We’re getting close to Godwin’s Law territory.[/quote]
It is interesting to speculate. But I really don’t think there’s a conspiracy theory in this situation. What would happen next year if Braswell goes down? We needed front court help. I have to trust the coaches that they believe they got the best they could to help the team.
